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BITTER ICE

A MEMOIR OF LOVE, FOOD, AND OBSESSION

A disturbing account of family life with an anorexic, alcoholic, mentally ill husband, and an endurance test for the reader as well. Lawrence begins near the end of her ordeal. Isolated from extended family and friends (only her children still visit home on school holidays), she has caved in to the demands and illnesses of her husband and his pathological schedule: “Always very early, a run followed by a plunge into a bathtub filled with ice and water, a sauna, another plunge, work from eight or so until two or three, then another run, a plunge, a sauna, another plunge. . . . In bed by eight-thirty.” Husband Tom drinks plenty of wine but no water—he only chews ice and then spits water and saliva into towels and tissues left around the house, trying to avoid swallowing liquids and thus any dreaded “bloating.— Although physical abuse was never part of the equation in Lawrence’s married life, Tom “had beaten [her] down with relentless complaining and his desperate need for ritual.— For some 30 years, all recounted here, Lawrence—who earned advanced degrees, taught sociology, anthropology, and history, worked in real estate and construction firms, and raised two children essentially by herself—put up with all the revolting symptoms. She describes in sickening detail the sights and smells of living with someone whose body was essentially consuming itself. Lawrence seems remarkably tepid about the relationship from the start, and not just in retrospect. Why, oh why, did such an accomplished woman stay in such a marriage? She cites variously, and often convincingly, the mores of the era, religion, financial need, family expectations, and concerns for her children. Eventually Lawrence musters the wherewithal to reach out for help, and escapes, exhausted and overwhelmed. After wading through the gruesome detail here, even the most sympathetic readers may feel the same. (Author tour)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-688-16215-0

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

Well-told and admonitory.

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

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